


a name that's particular

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Series: Four-Color Love (A Comic Book Romance) [21]
Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuart gets adopted by a stray cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a name that's particular

**Author's Note:**

> Look, a title reference that isn't from a pop song!
> 
> TBBT characters do not belong to me and I am not making any money off this work of fan fiction.
> 
> * * *

It’s a different stray cat.

Stuart notices that much, even though these days he’s got more on his mind than whether or not he’ll have enough tuna to share. He now gets to go home at the end of the day to actual food cooked by his fiancé (or bought by his fiancé, depending on what sort of day Raj has had). Some nights they join the rest of the gang around at Howard and Bernadette’s; some nights everyone comes over to their place. Ever since Sheldon finally blew up about the state of the apartment after everyone’s strewn around noodle boxes and beer bottles and left glasses caked with chia seeds in the sink (not-looking-at-anyone-Berna _dette_ ), the group unanimously decided to share around the task of hosting.

It’s a ginger tabby; the old one was a brown tabby. Stuart half-heartedly hopes that the old one is still okay, although he knows it’s unlikely.

“Ginger,” he calls, pulling the store door closed behind him. “Kitty?”

It comes to him, purring circles around his ankles, and Stuart’s digging in his pockets for change within seconds, hoping to have enough to grab a can of something from the 7-11.

The smell of sardines and tuna is strong. The cat eats daintily and fast at the same time. Stuart watches it eat. Aside from being too skinny, it seems to be in okay shape. No collar. But collars can fall off. There might be a microchip, but that’s not exactly something he can tell by looking.

Done with the Fancy Feast (extravagant for a stray, but the 7-11 didn’t exactly offer a plethora of options), the cat sits still for a moment and lets Stuart scratch behind its ears, before getting up and sauntering away.

“Sure, eat and run,” Stuart says, picking up the can and tossing it in the trash.

 

It’s back again the following night. And the next. And the next.

 

The next week, Stuart has the cat food set out ready, and when the cat’s eaten about half of it he starts scratching it behind the ears. A steady purr rises up, broken only by pauses to snarf more food.

Stuart feels bad for lulling it into a false sense of security, and he gets an almighty scratch across the palm of his hand while he’s shoveling the cat into the carrier. He locks the door and then presses a tissue to his hand. he probably deserved it.

After a little hissing, the cat settles down, glaring out of the carrier at him. Stuart settles the carrier on the passenger seat of his car and stretches the seat belt around it.

“It’s for your own good, you know.”

The cat makes a disgruntled noise.

When he takes the carrier out of the car at the vet’s, it leaves behind a wet patch on the seat. Oh well. It’ll clean, and he and Raj usually go places in Raj’s car anyway.

 

“Congratulations, it’s a girl,” Yvette says.

Stuart blinks. “I thought ginger cats were always boys.”

“Ginger girls are uncommon, but not as rare as people think.” The vet runs the microchip scanner over the cat’s neck. “She’s not chipped. I can make a few calls and see if anyone’s reported her missing, but she’s not spayed either, so she’s most likely to be a stray.”

“She’s not pregnant, is she?”

“Surprisingly, no.” Yvette smiles at him. “I guess you and Raj aren’t ready to be grandparents.”

“Give it time,” Stuart says.

“So will I send her over to the SPCA if nobody claims her?”

“No,” Stuart says, surprising himself with his own vehemence. “I mean... do you think she’d get along with Cinnamon?”

Yvette shakes her head, but it’s not a negation. “Don’t you think you should ask Raj first?”

“I will. I have somewhere to keep her until I do. Or instead.”

“I’ll organize her spaying and chipping.”

“Thanks. Uh... don’t tell Raj. I need this to be something I ask him.”

“Yeah, sure. Now c'mere, that hand needs proper cleaning.”

It feels like the most inane conspiracy ever.

 

Ginger takes her sweet time healing after her surgery, napping in her basket in the storeroom day after day and demanding room service. Fortunately, his hand heals faster. Stuart tries a few names on her – Krosp, Azrael, Jupiter, and (half-heartedly) Garfield – but she ignores everything but Ginger.

Yvette says she’s ten months old and has had one litter of kittens. Stuart tries not to wonder what happened to them. Then he goes and searches every dark corner in a three-block radius, just in case.

He doesn’t find anything.

Nobody comes forward to claim Ginger.

She seems to be pretty well settled in the store. Once her stitches come out she’s back on her feet, but since she doesn’t complain (much) about living in back, Stuart starts considering just having her stay in the store. There aren’t many mice, but enough to entertain her, and once she’s properly litter trained she can wander around the rest of the store. Bookstores have cats. There are those cafés now, even, that have a dozen cats. Why shouldn’t he have a store cat?

He really is planning to tell Raj anyway, just so he knows, but before he can Ginger decides to announce her own presence.

 

It’s delivery day, so he’s propped open the door to take boxes in back, assuming Ginger will sleep through it the same as she sleeps through everything. And then he’s coming and going so much that he doesn’t really notice that she relocates herself.

So when the regular gang show up after work (what _is_ it like to work nine to five? he really should ask Raj someday) and Howard says, “Hey, uh, Stuart? When did you get a store cat?” Stuart’s response is, “Huh?”

Ginger is lying in the front window display by the feet of the Batman standee, in a patch of sunlight, her eyes mostly closed, drowsing but watchful. Sheldon immediately slides sideways between the book racks and crouches down to pet her. Stuart hopes that this isn’t going to set him off again. He heard enough about the crazy cat collecting the first time around.

“So what’s her name? Selina? Kitrina? Khoshekh?” Howard asks.

“Ginger,” Stuart admits.

“You,” says Howard, “are a disgrace to the name of geek.”

“I’m not taking that kind of talk from you, Wolowitz; half your pull list is yuri hentai that makes me wonder what definition of ‘pull’ I should be using.” Stuart nods at the counter, where he’s already got all of their comics assembled. “I feel like I should start stocking brown paper bags just for you.”

Leonard makes an _ooooh_ noise that’s usually followed by someone yelling “fight!”. Raj looks from his fiancé to his best friend uncertainly, quite possibly wondering if he should be restraining one of them.

Howard just laughs. “You don’t need to do that. I’m not ashamed.” And he wanders into the back room to peruse more porn.

“I have to wonder how Bernadette feels about his thing for tentacles,” Stuart says.

Leonard laughs. “You’ve met Bernadette. She’s probably on the giving end.” He turns away to go and browse, thankfully.

“We need to talk about this,” Raj says when the other three are all safely elsewhere in the shop. (Sheldon is still sitting in the window display wth Ginger. Stuart can hear him singing to her.)

“About Bernadette and tentacles? I’d rather not.”

“About the _cat_.”

“What about the cat?”

“Well, is she living here now?”

“I guess she is.”

“I don’t think so.” Raj gives him one of his rare serious looks. “You can’t keep her cooped up here all day and night. She needs a cat run. Somewhere she can go outside, but without being in danger from other animals.”

Stuart waves a hand at the front of the shop. “Do you know how hard it is to even get a permit to have tables on the street? Rick and Sam at the café took forever to get theirs. I don’t think anyone’s going to let me build a kitty jungle gym for her.”

“At _home_ , idiot.” Raj grabs his hand and pulls him close. “We can put it out on the balcony.”

“But what about outside breakfasts?”

“It doesn’t have to take up the whole space! She can _climb_ , baby. We’ll get something that’s more vertical than horizontal.”

“Landlady permission?”

“Like Bethany’s going to care.”

Raj has a point. Bethany probably wouldn’t care if they put up a whipping post on their balcony, although she’d probably demand an invitation to their post-warming party.

Besides, Raj has been steadily reeling him in closer, and Stuart has difficulty making counter-arguments with Raj’s tongue in his mouth.

 

Ginger comes home two weeks later, once Raj has had time to obtain and set up a cat cage on the tiny balcony. Well... once Raj has had time to obtain and then pay somebody else to set up a cat cage on the tiny balcony, to be perfectly honest.

Cinnamon is suspicious of the new installation. She tries the swinging door a couple of times, but can only reach the lowest of the cross-pieces by standing up on her back paws.

“There’s just more one thing before you bring her home,” Raj says on Friday morning, dropping two pieces of multigrain bread in the toaster.

Stuart stirs his coffee. “What’s that?”

“You can’t call her Ginger.”

“What?”

“It’s so uncreative!”

“But Cinnamon and Ginger go together.”

“Stuart Bloom, you are an _artist_.” Raj reaches up and opens the spice cupboard door. (Other people have spice racks. Raj has a goddamn cupboard.) “You can keep the spice theme, but a little more imagination than _Ginger_ , please.”

“She answers to it!”

“She also answers to ‘Shōjo’. Howard taught her. He also said something about adding pussy to our relationship that I'm not going to repeat.”

Stuart goes to look in the cupboard, absently wondering if there's anything he can kill Howard with in it. “There’s really not much here that’s orange... I’m not calling her ‘Turmeric’...”

“It doesn’t have to be orange!”

“Yes, it does.”

Way in back there’s a slender glass bottle with a half-dozen fine orangey-red strands standing delicately upright. Stuart pulls it forward to read the label.

“Saffron?”

“Oh, be careful with that, it’s rare and really expensive.”

Stuart thinks of feline genetics and vet bills. “That suits her.”

 

So Saffron comes home that night (and she _does_ answer to “Shōjo” as well, damn Howard). This time she doesn’t pee in the cat carrier, although she’s not happy because she thinks it means another vet visit. Stuart drives with one hand on the wheel and the other poking his fingers through the wire of the carrier for her to headbutt.

Raj has shut Cinnamon in the bedroom. This fools nobody. Cinnamon starts barking as soon as she smells cat. Saffron, unfazed, takes a leisurely tour of the living room. She sniffs everything, especially Cinnamon’s basket. Raj has already set up her litter tray and pours some food into her bowl; Saffron comes running, crunches a few pieces, investigates Cinnamon’s water bowl, and then goes to stare intently at the bedroom door.

“We’re supposed to introduce them slowly,” Raj says.

“Oh, yeah. Let’s just open the door an inch and leave them to chat. I’m sure they’ll bond over their feelings about kibble.” Stuart picks Saffron up and opens the door. Cinnamon blasts out at sixty miles an hour, yipping as if she has been personally offended by the sound barrier. She pulls up short in the middle of the living room and does a complete 360∘ turn, looking for the invader, looking thoroughly confused.

Saffron, snug in Stuart’s arms, looks down at Cinnamon smugly, without so much as a hiss.

“Kids,” Raj says, sighing.

Stuart just grins and lets Saffron down.

Cinnamon chases Saffron out the cat door and then is frustrated when Saffron bolts straight up the array of platforms and sits at the top of the cage, licking her paw.

Saffron turns the tables half an hour later, when Cinnamon has too-complacently settled down on the couch, by leaping to the couch back and then attacking Cinnamon’s tail.

And when Bethany comes up to check on how Saffron is settling in (thanks to a noise complaint at exactly ten o’clock), both animals dash past her out of the apartment and down the hallway.

 

Something wakes Stuart up at three in the morning. He’s not sure if it’s a noise, or a movement, or if Raj is subconsciously willing him to wake up so they can have sex.

It’s not the last one, at least; Raj is sound asleep.

Sound asleep, with Cinnamon asleep on his feet... and Saffron curled midway up the bed, nestled between her humans.

Stuart reaches down, scritches the back of her neck, and falls back asleep with his hand resting there and her purr rumbling through his body.


End file.
